The tank questions thread

[Vdaan]

1) Do you know what effective health is? : From what I could understand from reading the posts on EH, it's the total amount of dmg a player can take before death counting hps, armor, and mitigation.

2) What sort of cycle would you use to generate threat, assuming you need to use Shield Block? : (prot spec) SS, SB, sunder/revenge, DS, TC, Sunder, rinse, repeat.

3) 490 defense makes you immune to crushing blows? : No

4) 25% block chance is required? : Yes

5) How can you become immune to crushing blows? : W/ SB yes

6) Is it useful to build Defense past 490? : It still helps w/ mitigation, but you can also do tht by addind avoidance instead.

7) Devastate and Sunder Armour: : I'm lost here =\

8) Is it a good idea to stack a lot of avoidance in your gear? : not to the point where you are avoiding attacks and losing threat/rage do to long strings of dodges/parrys

Ok I took the test. How well did i do teacher?

[faitas]

A pally friend decided to take the test.

He doesn't raid so I wasn't going to expect much but I think he did fine.

Questions:
1) Do you know what effective health is? If yes, give a short summary.
2a) What sort of cycle would you use to generate threat, assuming you need to keep Holy Shield up and the target is humanoid?
2b) What sort of cycle would you use to generate threat, assuming you need to keep Holy Shield up and the target is undead?
3) What consumables do you bring to a raid, and why?
4) You need to tank something that can spell reflect - what do you do?
5) How can you become immune to crushing blows?
6) The sheep are wandering beside you while tanking trash - what do you do?
7) How much +spell damage do you feel is a good amount?
8) How would you compare dodge, parry, and block as stats to stack when building your 102.4%?


Answers:
1)Never heard of it.
2a)Up SoR; Pull with AS; Holy Shield; Consacrate; JoR; Up SoR; JoR; HS; Consacrate;JoR; etc …
2b)Up SoR; Pull with AS; Exorcism; HS, Consacrate;JoR;SoR; etc …
3)N/A
4) 100% spell reflect? I don't tank it. :-D But I have tanked Pandemonium with no problems. Just hit him with all you got when he is not reflecting and dismiss (right click) all your holy damage when he starts reflecting it and move away from you conscrate. ;-)
5) 102.4% of Avoidance + mitigation
6) Move the trash away from the sheep
7) +300 spell dmg.
8) Whatever it takes to get to 102.4%. Once there, you can start thinking if more dodge or more block is better as parry is hard to get. Usually dodge is preferable although too much dodge may hurt your ability to generate aggro which you can get with block. So I think I'd try to keep block a little higher then dodge.


One question it would be interesting to add but not for the sake of raiding perhaps, is how a pally would tank a boss that dispels =)

that should be interesting... anyone here has ever tanked epoch hunter in durnholde? it's quite hard and mana consuming for pallys

[Float]

Hi I'm Float. I main tank for Months Behind. You probably shouldn't have heard of us because we're not that good, but Lore makes a big deal out of it whenever I let him tank a boss and people won't shut up about it. I think he made me register for the forums here because he knows I'm a sucker for TLDR shit. Sorry ahead of time.

Most of the questions with potentially concrete answers have been answered clearly enough that I don't need to restate them. The beauty of tanking though is how fluid a process it really is. A bot can play a hunter with a convincing degree of skill, but the adaptation required of end-game main tanks means tanking is more than just science and numbers, it's art.

1) Do you know what effective health is? If yes, give a short summary.

Anyone with enough presence of mind to stumble across these forums should know basically what effective health is. The real question is what makes it important? It has been mentioned in this thread already that EH makes for a nice buffer for your healers. That's true, and is probably the most important reason to seek high EH when learning new encounters.

Clearing new content, no matter how skilled your guild is, isn't about 25 people playing perfectly. It's about 25 people playing pretty well with enough redundancy built into your strategy that minor mistakes don't kill you. If one mob casts one spell that needs to be interrupted, you assign two interrupters to it, that way if one misses/is resisted/dies/isn't watching/disconnects or WHATEVER, the spell is still interrupted. If you have a boss capable of 2 or 3 shotting your tank, you stack enough HP that you fall into the 3-shot category and not the 2-shot. Simply put, the more room for error you have, the more likely you are to actually beat an encounter.

What else is EH good for? Well it's good for incoming damage that can't be mitigated or avoided by your normal tank abilities. Spell damage and environmental damage probably jumps immediately into everyone's mind, but physical damage being unloaded into you while you're stunned can also fall into this category. All the avoidance in the world won't save you when Kaz'rogal kills you in a five second window.

2) What sort of cycle would you use to generate threat, assuming you need to use Shield Block?

I often choose to eat crushing blows from the first bosses in Hyjal because I'm rage starved, and their crushes hit for less than the normal blows of later bosses. The idea of "needing" to use Shield Block is a fluid one, and is one of the things I like about tanking. You do NEED to use it, but you also need to know WHEN to use it (if you haven't learned by Illidan...you will). That said, including it in a rotation when you have ample rage is always a good thing and I probably end up using it more on bosses that can't even crush simply because less damage taken, on command no less, is the best thing a tank can ask for.

The Shield Slam --> Revenge --> Devastate --> Devastate --> Repeat cycle has already been mentioned here, so I don't need to really elaborate on it. The more important thing to know is when to spend rage on Devastate over Heroic Strike. There's an interesting thread about Devastate on the EU warrior forums that claims it is better than Heroic Strike in every situation (assuming full sunders and a BT weapon) because you can auto attack AND Devastate. That's true for off-tanks. For main tanks (hello!) you can Heroic Strike AND Devastate. Against bosses that provide ample rage generation you'll want to try to queue a Heroic Strike for every single swing during the above mentioned cycle. The only tricky part about threat gen is being aware of what your rage will be AFTER your Heroic Strike lands, and making sure you will have enough rage for your next casted ability. Where you are in your rotation will effect this: you need at least 30 rage to justify queueing an HS if you haven't Shield Slammed yet, you only need ~20 rage if SS is cooling down. Once again, the dynamic here is what makes tanking interesting.

3) 490 defense makes you immune to crushing blows?

lolanswered.

4) 25% block chance is required?

lolanswered.

5) How can you become immune to crushing blows?

One push of a button...or tanking any boss at the end of BT/Hyjal.

6) Is it useful to build Defense past 490?

Yes and no. This has been touched on by previous posters, so I'll let it simmer for another second or two, and go further in depth on Question 8.

7) Devastate and Sunder Armour: Compare and contrast

lol2.3

8) Is it a good idea to stack a lot of avoidance in your gear? Why or why not?

Avoidance, combined with incredibly poor warrior rage generation mechanics (I can go 20 seconds without generating any more rage than my auto-attack...and then gain 100 rage from one single hit) has always been a thorn in our collective side.

Is it a good idea to stack a lot of avoidance in your gear when learning a new encounter? No. Definitely not. For reasons explained above, you are much better off spending your hard-to-come-by itemization points on stamina. Even if your total damage taken over the course of an encounter is made higher by trading avoidance stats for stamina, the hits will come more evenly and give your healers both more time to react, and a better opportunity to learn how to heal the fight. Tanking anything is a collaborative effort between you and your healers and the more comfortable they become with each fight, the easier time you'll have.

Is it a good idea to stack a lot of avoidance in your gear when farming encounters? Kind of, yeah. Once your healers are comfortable enough with any given fight, you can start letting out their leash a bit. I would never suggest STACKING avoidance over stamina, but if you can find similarly budgeted pieces that will give you added avoidance at a minor stamina cost, take them. There are no fights in the game the REQUIRE you to have more than 20k hp or so, which means that while having 24k when learning is a good thing, you can cut back to 22k or 23k, add avoidance, and still trust your experienced healers to keep you up. A change like this can and will reduce the overall damage you take in, and in the case of Tier 6 gear can allow you to pick up helpful set bonuses that you couldn't make good use of while still learning.

Stacking defense past 490 falls into that last section. Tanking gear becomes so lathered with defense that being UNDER 490 isn't even possible without unequipping items. Therefore, moving past that number isn't always so much a choice as it is an inevitability. I don't advocate stacking defense, or trying to reach some insane defense number in the hopes of being a better tank, but conveniently enough blizzard seems to consider defense just another avoidance stat (you know...because it is) and you may find that items with mass amounts of stamina are not overwhelmed with defense, while equal level items that do not focus solely on stamina will offer plenty of defense to supplement the block/dodge/parry ratings they carry.

[Athan]

How 'bout a couple "real world" questions you can throw in for those that don't seem to be up on theory too well? You could ask questions something along these lines:

You're off-tanking in X encounter when the main tank goes down. How would you react?

You're leading a group in a dungeon where multi-mob pulls are common. How would you tackle these pulls?

Let's assume for a moment that you're no longer a warrior, and are dpsing or healing. You pull aggro on a mob that manages to get away from the main tank. How do you react?

What these questions have in common is that there's not necessarily one right or wrong answer - what you're looking for is insight and understanding of game mechanics, and perhaps even get a glimpse at the applicant's character. Even if a person answered these questions "wrong," if he or she has a reasonable explanation, the answer may help you to determine if the person can at least think on his feet.

[Arrowson]

1) Effective health is the raw amount of damg a mob must do to you before u die, the damg as unaffected by armor or avoidence

2) SS>Revenge>Sunder/Devistate>Sunder/Devistate rense and repeat while keeping up SB and spaming HS when rage is more than 50

3) yea

4) no, 25% block chance+miss chance+parry chance+dodge chance

5) getting 102% avoidence, SB +50% counts towards it

6) yea, just not as useful as for the -Chance to be crit no longer helps in PvE

7) sunder causes 300 threat and applies the debuff where as Dev causes 100 threat + damg and only refreshes the sunder Debuff. Dev only gives more threat for most when 5 sunders are up

8) yes if your not gimping your EH

Is that all ya got?

[Meia]

Vdaan,

There is a problem with your #4. Your #6 is also backwards and a little incorrect. #5&#8 also have other answers.

Float,

I think you skipped a few questions. lolanswered isn't an answer, and I didn't see a clear cut answer to those "lolanswered" responses in the rest of your post.

Arrowson,

#3, In what way "Yes"?
#5, what do you mean +50% shield block?

[adrenalize]

Vdaan,

There is a problem with your #4. Your #6 is also backwards and a little incorrect. #5&#8 also have other answers.

Float,

I think you skipped a few questions. lolanswered isn't an answer, and I didn't see a clear cut answer to those "lolanswered" responses in the rest of your post.

Arrowson,

#3, In what way "Yes"?
#5, what do you mean +50% shield block?

I think what Float meant with "Lolanswered" Is that these questions, and the subsequent answers are absolutly everywhere and have been answered serveral times in the post previous to his own. On the whole, What i read from the rest of his post are the words of a Skilled and extremerly confident tank.

Im going to get to anwering the questions myself.

[Meia]

Ah I see. Yes, the rest of his post was solid, I just took those to mean he had already answered them because he had covered it in another part of his post.

[Tristessa]

1) Do you know what effective health is? If yes, give a short summary.
It's the amount of damage someone can take before dying (on their own, with no healing). EH is calculated using a character's health and armor. I forgot the exact equation, however it serves to show that a character's armor is directly related to their survival and "scales" where survival is concerned.

2) What sort of cycle would you use to generate threat, assuming you need to use Shield Block?
Bloodrage and Shield Slam, Shield Block, Revenge when available, use SS/SB+Revenge when available, Sunder when waiting on those to cool down, Heroic Strike when overflowing with Rage.

3) 490 defense makes you immune to crushing blows?
No, 490 defense makes you immune to critical hits for lv.73+ mobs.

4) 25% block chance is required?
A myth. 27.4% avoidance (dodge + parry + block) is required.

5) How can you become immune to crushing blows?
Crushing Blows will happen; however minimizing the chance of it happening will reduce stress on the healers, as multiple Crushing Blows in a row will essentially wipe the raid. The Shield Block ability adds 75% block rating.

With that in mind, the only way to push the Crushing Blow off the combat "table" is to have 102.4% avoidance. 102.4% - 75% block = 27.4%. Most warriors would reach this simply by speccing protection and equipping decent gear.

6) Is it useful to build Defense past 490?
Arguable. Any additional point in Defense will increase avoidance--for warriors, who get Rage by getting hit, it might increase the chance of "rage starvation" which will make it harder to generate and sustain threat on a mob.

7) Devastate and Sunder Armour: Compare and contrast
Devastate is a weakness in my knowledge. T_T

What I do know is that, while both are instant attacks, Devastate will inflict additional threat depending on damage done. Sunder's armor-reducing qualities will also impact Devastate's damage, so...from memory I believe Devastate will be superior to Sunder Armor in generating threat when there are 5 Sunders already on the mob.

8) Is it a good idea to stack a lot of avoidance in your gear? Why or why not?
Having a lot of avoidance is good in a way that your healer will not need to heal something that didn't hit you. However, warriors need to get hit to get rage, which they need to generate and sustain threat. Stacking too much avoidance will increase the chances of "rage starvation".

Also, while a good train of dodge/parry/block/miss will make the healers' job easier, a bad run of hits will also see a lot of "spiking" on the damage done to the tank. This might confuse the healers when they see the warrior being fine for 10 seconds, then suddenly having low health 5 seconds later.

Ergh, I think I might be a bit wobbly on a couple of the questions there. >_>

[Vdaan]

Thank you Meia. I know im not the best tank by a long shot but I do try to learn form here (what I can understand), and from my mistakes.

[Roana]

6) Is it useful to build Defense past 490?

One little known thing: Defense rating is the second most effective stat (in terms of itemization cost) after shield block rating if you wish to gear for passive crush immunity. Shield Block rating gives you 0.127% avoidance stats per rating point, Defense rating 0.068% avoidance stats, Dodge rating 0.053% avoidance stats, and Parry rating 0.042% avoidance stats (avoidance in this context includes chance to block, too).